Tradition

At school, the administration tries very hard to harmoniously meld the English language with Korean culture. The kids are not allowed to speak Korean during class and if they do we've been instructed to discipline them. I thought this was a bit odd when I first arrived, but it can be really disruptive. These kids are in an immersion program essentially and it just works better to keep their thoughts on and in English while they're at school.

A few times a month we'll have these special days where we all participate in these traditional Korean activities. Sometimes it will be games, other times they will dress up in the traditional clothing. So this past month we had a couple of these days. The first one was all morning and it consisted of several Korean games. Each foreign teacher was assigned to a post while the Korean teachers stayed with the class and herded them from activity to activity. We had heard that we were doing this ahead of time and some of the teachers were concerned that they would have to proctor one of the awful activities. I don't know the Korean names for the games, so I'll just tell you want they consisted of. There was wrestling, a stick throwing game, hacky-sack, this weird rock balancing thing and a tug of war. I couldn't get photo's of all of the activities, but I got a couple. Honestly, some of them weren't even worthy of explanation.

The list was posted and I had been designated to proctor wrestling. I was happy with that obviously. Last year I tried to get the kids to wrestle, but the administration never looked on that too fondly. I was really breaking barriers! Can you imagine...Children wrestling! Oh no! So, I was happy to let these kids go at it. Kids love wrestling. It's fun, it's competitive and at their level and ability, it's harmless. Korean wrestling is a lot different though. Luckily I had watched it on television here. I never watch television though. I think I've turned it on four times in the last month and two of those times were only to watch a special on Ankor Wat (my Christmas destination).

What they do is a lot different. First, they wear spandex exercise shorts and have a piece of cloth tied around their waist. Next, they both get on the sand ground and sit on their knees. On the refs command they grab each others cloth tie and slowly stand up. Then the ref says "go" and they wrestle. However, they can only hold their opponents waist tie and to win, just like in Sumo wrestling, you have to either push the guy out of the ring or bring him to his back. Most fights last less then 10 seconds. Of course the kids last much longer, especially the girls. The kids came in the room and lined up against the wall. I got them all pumped up and then chose the fighters. I'd try to pair evenly sized kids to go at it, but to be cruel I sometimes put the little guy with the big guy. The little guys would usually win because of their agility. Here are some pictures.






You can kind of see the idea behind it. I didn't know what was going on either, but they're kids so it's not like anyone knew anyways.

The girls were funny to watch. They never really tried to win or hurt their opponent. Instead, they would just spin around in circles until one of them got bored and conceded by falling.

The tug...

It was a fun day. The kids and teachers like the break.

***At my mothers request, I am going to write more about the kids and teaching. Don't worry, the wild nights and weekends will still be posted. I am here to teach, but I'm also here to live...